Part 6 (2/2)

The children know it for what it is. Old and young, rich and poor, recognize its meaning. It embodies the great idea of a man learning and growing by his a.s.sociation with the wisdom and experience of other men.

It is the great clearing house of human intelligence where knowledge is mutually exchanged and every one can learn what the rest know. It tells the lowest and meanest and most ignorant that here is the opportunity open to everybody to know, and therefore that books are a common concern of the village, by which it sets great store.

If, on the other hand, the public library is neglected, or starved with excessive thrift, or if it is crowded into a corner, opened at rare intervals and approached with difficulty, all this influence is lost.

The increase of reading tends to a general broadening of life. Human nature is selfish so long as the man is isolated, for he is controlled by his impulses and pa.s.sions, and guided by his own narrow ideas.

Our views of life are moulded by reading. The records are here, describing lands and people we have never seen, centuries in which we have not lived, men who pa.s.sed off the stage in past ages. The discoveries of science, the developments of workmans.h.i.+p, the growth of civilization; thought, wit, fancy, feeling, which has appealed to the world, and that study, the study of man, is ill.u.s.trated in infinitely diverse forms of story and song: all these are in books and they give us the advantage of wide horizons and enlarged acquaintance with life. A community leavened with such influences, where people generally understand, where all grow up from their youth to know, to think, to communicate and to have common acquaintance with the past and the distance and with the secrets of nature, and all the many ways of doing things, is a stronger, happier and more prosperous community because of that very fact, and the books are plainly a means to so desirable an end.

W. R. EASTMAN.

HOW A LIBRARY HELPED THE BOYS

As the children have grown up since our library was established, it is wonderful how their demands for books have widened. A boy in his casual reading finds some particular branch of study, in science, mechanics, art or politics, which arouses a sleeping instinct. Straightway he forsakes his stories and his plays and goes to the library to satisfy his new desires. Year by year the demand upon the library has broadened and books have been added treating of electricity, the X-ray, wireless telegraphy, mending bicycles, telephones, bee-keeping, care of pet animals, political, social and economic questions, and still the books do not meet all demands. New subjects are called for and new books must be bought.

BEAVER DAM ARGUS.

Side by side in the wilderness, our forefathers planted the church and the school; and on these two supports the nation has stood firm and grown great. But a tripod is necessary for stable equilibrium. As the country has grown, its industrial, economic and political problems have grown more numerous and more complex, and the nation required a broader base of intelligence and morality for its security and perpetuity. The third support for a wider and higher national life has been found in the public library, which co-operating with the school, doubles the value of the education the child receives in school and further incites and furnishes him with facilities for doing so. It also enables the adult to make up for the opportunities he neglected or, more often, did not have in early life. It does this, too, at an expense to the community of not more than one tenth of the cost per capita of school education.

F. M. CRUNDEN.

THE LIBRARY SUPPORT

This is the fundamental matter after all--money. Whence shall the funds come? The church plan, the club plan--all are dependent on the spasmodic and irregular support that results from the labors of a soliciting committee using persuasive arguments with business men and others. There are certain expenses that are absolutely essential--books first and most, a room for which, probably, rent must be paid (though some generous citizen may give the use of it), periodicals to be subscribed for, heat, light, table, chairs, etc., besides the most important feature of the whole scheme--the librarian.

The wisest form of organization is the tax-supported free public library. Is it desirable that the small town shall in its beginning in library matters attempt at once to secure a munic.i.p.al tax to found and maintain a free public library under the state law? There are those who believe this is the only way to make a beginning. Eventually, if not in the beginning, the free public library on a rate or tax-supported basis is the most desirable form of library organization.

ALICE S. TYLER.

WHY THE FREE LIBRARY SHOULD BE SUPPORTED BY TAXATION

1 Such a tax puts the library on the right basis as a public inst.i.tution. The purpose of the library is the same as that of the school--public education, the enlargement and enrichment of the intellectual life of the community--and it should, therefore, be supported on the same grounds and by the same methods as the school.

2 The library supported by local taxation ceases to be a charity, contributed by the few to the many, and becomes the right and property of all. When I use a library supported by private gifts, I am accepting a favor; when I use a library supported by public tax, I am using what is mine by right. The tax thus promotes a feeling of independence and self-respect in the library's patrons.

3 Taxation is the easiest and fairest way to raise the needed money.

Five hundred dollars raised by entertainments, subscriptions, sales, etc., means a great burden of labor, care and expense to a few, and usually to net that sum a very much larger sum must be expended, while $500 spread on the tax rolls would hardly be felt even by the largest taxpayer.

4 It adds dignity to the library and increases the respect in which it is held. To be made each year an object of charity for which private subscriptions are solicited and rummage sales held tends to bring it into contempt and greatly lowers its influence in the community.

5 A stated tax, yielding a known and fixed income, enables the trustees to pursue a consistent and stable plan for library development, such as is impossible where the income is dependent on fluctuating impulse or effort.

6 There is no village tax levied from which the people can get so large a return for so little money. A $500 tax in a village of 3,000 people is equivalent to about 16 cents for each resident. For this insignificant sum each person in the village is offered a pleasant reading room, as good as that supplied by many a club, a dozen or more of the best periodicals, a collection of books such as only a very few of the more wealthy can possess as individuals, and about $200 worth of new books to read every year.

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